A Long Island haunted house attraction come to life, complete with all the hot dog farts. Trying to explain what happens in this movie is impossible. Just sit back and enjoy the ride once the spider lady appears and sucks the life out of the guy who’s spent most of the movie talking through a sock puppet (while simultaneously wearing a t-shirt of him and his homemade hand muppet). A goopy, psychotronic delight where you can practically smell the monster latex all around you.

The self-deprecating crack Robert Forster makes in JACKIE BROWN about being sensitive to losing his hair makes so much more sense now. Between that, Henry Silva’s big game hunter enlisting black kids to be his inner city guide, and Sydney Lassick selling puppies for pharmaceutical experiments, this is just as much a wicked dark comedy as it is a marauding creature feature.

An odd mix of muddled ‘70s progressive politics, icky creature feature SFX (that killer mutated bear is a hoot!), and lumpy, sad character actors dealing with topics possibly too serious for something this unapologetically pulpy, all mixed into a somewhat classy studio genre product from consummate professional workman John Frankenheiemer. Kinda loved every second, to be frank, right up to the goofy as hell stinger.

My hearts aflame
My body’s strained
But god I like it
My mind has changed
My body’s frame
But god I like it [16mm]

Sean S. Cunningham crosses a ‘50s/‘60s space serial with a schlocky, gross ‘80s creature feature and it’s, well, mostly pretty boring. Easily the worst of the “underwater terror” wave that came out of ‘89, but at least Miguel Ferrer’s having some fun with it, at first mindlessly fucking up before panicking and going full tilt heel. I miss him.

‪This has its moments - the monster reveal, a harried chase on the beach at night, an attack from beneath a life raft that is basically my worst aquatic nightmare come to life - but even those can’t make up for the fact that this stretches its tiny, single location creature feature premise to the absolute limit. The Lovecraftian oceanic imagery (it’s basically DAGON ‘19) and a climax that goes Full Predator lift up a saggy midsection, but it’s still a pretty long 84 minutes, which is saying something, seeing how it’s shot in Fiji and all. ‬

Still trying to wrap my head around why this was rejected by both critics and (at least financially) audiences. It looks great (and is colorfully designed), features multiple kaiju legends whipping ass, Rick Dalton level mean mugging from Kyle Chandler, Charles Dance villainously hamming it up, Eleven playing Drew Barrymore as the Firestarter, and blurry MUTO mating videos. I’m more than cool with it. Mothra alone is worth the price of ission, and the genuine awe it delivers in the face of forces we can’t understand is why cinema (or any art, really) exists in the first place.

Arguably a better pure EVIL DEAD movie than ARMY OF DARKNESS (and I really love ARMY OF DARKNESS).